The Absolute Best Way To Cook Cube Steak

Cube steak, also called Swiss steak, is an inexpensive cut that usually comes from the top or bottom round, which means it's near the rump of the cow. Cuts from this area tend to be flavorful, but they're not always the most tender. Cube steak has been pre-tenderized and through the tenderization process, it can resemble ground beef.

As noted by The Spruce Eats, the term cube steak comes from the cut's appearance after it's been run through a mechanical tenderizer that leaves it with cube-shaped indentations. Cooks can utilize the flavor of cube steak and bring out a melt-in-your-mouth tenderness by simmering it in a slow cooker beef stew, like this recipe from Pitch Fork Foodie. And as Tastes of Lizzy T points out, with a cube steak parmesan recipe, putting cube steaks in a slow cooker will give you beef so tender that it can be cut with a fork.

The most common recipe that uses cube steak is chicken-fried steak. According to Taste of Home, this dish can be forgiving since it's topped with a gravy that covers up any dry texture. If you've never had chicken-fried steak, the name can be confusing. The moniker comes from the way the dish is prepared, which is similar to frying chicken, as reported by Culture Trip. Chicken-fried steak is a cube steak that has been dredged in a flour breading and flash fried in a pan, then it's covered in a white gravy and is often served with mashed potatoes.

Once a recipe has become popular, the details of its origins can become murky. The history of chicken-fried steak is no exception, since it's hard to pinpoint just where this dish originated. However, Serious Eats reports there's evidence chicken-fried steak arrived in Texas sometime in the mid-1800s, and many historians believe it to be a spin on the Viennese meal of breaded veal, known as Weiner schnitzel.